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From outdoor festivals to small clubs. This has been quite the faithful amp and pushes enough volume to be very stage friendly.

I don't use the lead channel, but have messed with it a bit on the home front. I think it's very pedal friendly and get my gain there. I haven't used natural breakup much (usually too loud) but now that it's been recapped seems to have a more natural transition into the grit.

Yeah, 5 years of fairly heavy use the Brimars got tired. Tried re-biasing and they just didn't sound right. The JJ's brought it right back to life, although they have a bit of rattle.

I used the Blue for quite a few years of moderate gigging. Never dimed it but pushed it fairly hard. Great overall tone. I tried the RW&B on a whim and liked the results and decided to keep the Blue in a 67 Ampeg Reverberocket II (where it sounds equally spectacular). Recently I acquired a Weber Blue Dog for a Peavey Classic 30 and really like that speaker and think it'd probably be a good one for the PRII as well.

I'm the happy owner of two PRIIs that I almost always play in a stereo setup.

One has an Eminence The Tonker, the other an Eminence Red Fang. Right now I don't recall which tubes are in them, but they both have the short reverb tank. I have a footswitch for one of them, but I unplugged it; it sounds a lot better without it.

Just like Littleuch any overdrive I get from pedals because I set the amp to play as clean as possible.

(edited to add) ... and if I don't yet have your amp's serial number, get it to me and I'll tell you when yours was made. I now have data on over 1/30 of all PRIIs, so the picture's getting clearer all the time.

(This message was last edited by Stratopastor at 04:53 AM, Jan 4th, 2011)

By way of giving this thread a bump... does anyone know any blues harp players using a PRII? I've got one contacting me through the PRII website asking how to get more (and I quote) phat-ass crunchyness.

As I said, I appropriated mine from a harp player I used to gig with. It was in his basement for years, don't know if ever played through it. Probably not since he liked to sever the heads of the audience with a Bassman and Fender Reverb unit. I'm sure a PRII just couldn't get it done to his standards.

Sounds like this guy needs to play with the lead channel some. I'm sure there's a Mississippi saxophone hiding in there somewhere.

Liquid Smoke, the standard-issue speaker was a Fender Blue label 12" 8 ohm 50 watt which they sourced initially from Pyle and later from Eminence. The factory upgrade was an EV speaker with a massive magnet and an aluminium centre.

Thanks Stratopastor,
That's what I was wondering. There is a guy on my local Craigslist selling an aluminum dome, 8ohm, EV Force 12 with Fender label in xlnt condition. He says it's out of a PRII. He's asking $75 and I'm kind of tempted.

Your link indicates the EV as a factory upgrade and the CL one looks just like the one in the pic.

Were guys happy with this speaker in the PRII?
Any of you guys have one? Power rating?
Other comments?

(so long as it's about the PRII, can it be a "temporary thread drift"?)

LS, that's the one all right. There's some users' experiences on my page as linked above. I've never heard one, nor do I know what the power rating is :-) I'm guessing 'way more than enough for a PRII'...

Working purely on personal prejudice, it looks too much like a PA speaker and that makes me fear it's been designed as such, with a deliberately neutral sound. There was a time when people used that kind of thing in guitar amps but maybe they were sacrificing tone and character for volume.

Maybe someone will come on here and say what a great, soulful tone they have, in which case I won't be in position to argue!

"Thanks Stratopastor,
That's what I was wondering. There is a guy on my local Craigslist selling an aluminum dome, 8ohm, EV Force 12 with Fender label in xlnt condition. He says it's out of a PRII. He's asking $75 and I'm kind of tempted."

That sounds like mine if you're in the San Diego area.
They are great sounding speakers but they are HEAVY weight wise.

I had a guy contact me this week in Germany. He's just bought a PRII from Canada (running it with a separate step-down transformer). The stock speaker dates from Feb 1987 (-seven), only the second one I've heard of. Must have been among the last chassis to have come out of Fullerton, stored until needed, married with a bought-at-the-last-minute-to-save-money speaker, and shipped ... maybe just before the Red Knob range was rolled out.

This just in from a fellow-owner... don't attempt to wash the grill cloth through while it's still on the frame. The dye comes out of the wood of the frame and stains the grill cloth big time. Purple, apparently.

Ouch! Thanks for the warning; snakeskin on an amp is a semiperverted fantasy of mine, but purple?!

The guy I traded my second PRII from told me he had cleaned the grill cloth in a bath tub with a brush and luke warm soapy water. He said all the dirt came right off and there was no excess dye in water.

I guess it's a good thing I'm such a lazy bastard that I never came around to trying this at home with other Fender amps...

Actually the poor chap who emailed me has come back to say, he went back to it and just kept going 'till no more dye came out of the wood and eventually rinsed out of the grill cloth too. Sounds like if anyone is thinking of trying it then they should tell the rest of the family that the shower's going to be occupied for a while.

Snakeskin?

Different subject - see elsewhere in this forum for a mod to get more gain by bypassing the tone stack, footswitchable...

I owned one several years ago. It was my first attempt at downsizing to an easier to carry amp.
Boy, did I get that wrong! Paul Rivera must have used boat anchors for transformers.
I didn't particularly care for the lead channel, if I'm remembering correctly. The clean was great.

(1) A guy's emailed me to say he's added a switch which halves the capacitance in the mid-boost circuit - he likes the option of having mid-boost, but less fierce. The switch is on an extra plate screwed into the back of the cab.

(2) Last night I clipped out both snubber caps on v1, having read elsewhere that to do so helped get a Rivera Concert closer to some kind of classic Fender sound. It's definitely added something in the top end - maybe it's that 'chime' that people describe when writing about classic Fenders. I wouldn't know.

(3) While I was in there I undid the 'fatter tone' blocking cap mod. It never seemed to do anything.

Different issue - my tone controls don't seem to have as much effect as they used to. What might cause that? (or maybe my ears are on the blink...)

Finally, there are two PRIIs in Eric Clapton's charity garage sale today. Best get on the 'phone quick...

SP or anyone else, any idea what size tilt back legs would work on the PRII? I think this amp is a 1/2" or so shorter than a deluxe so I presume the same size legs would work. I hate amp stands but I also hate getting the speaker at the back of the knees in tight quarters.

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